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Greenshoots watch: Manufacturing boost

IT’s hard to find evidence of green shoots in a week when it was revealed that house prices fell, again, in May, more than 800 employees at British Airways agreed to temporarily work for no pay and Corus announced plant closures that will lead to 2,000 redundancies.

There are, however, some encouraging signs. Doug McWilliams, head of the Centre for Economics and Business Research, said that several large high-street retailers he advises have begun looking at bringing back their manufacturing to the UK from China.

The recession left many firms with huge quantities of merchandise that was difficult to shift. By bringing operations closer to home, they can halve the time it takes to get new products on to the shelves and react quicker when sentiment changes. McWilliams said: “A couple of my clients are looking into this. And, obviously, there is a good chance that when things get looked